


Nowhere You Should Roam

by Reginald_Magpie



Series: Any Failing Empire [3]
Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Fall Out Boy, Gray - Fandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Demigods, Alternate Universe - Music Store, Demigods, Drug Abuse, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Implied Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mommy Issues, Pete Wentz doesn't even go here., Poet!Pete, Psychologists & Psychiatrists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:19:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2477921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reginald_Magpie/pseuds/Reginald_Magpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Pete Wentz (son of Morpheus and chronic insomniac) is a washed up kid from Chicago who's been running since he hit the ground, and he wants to go home but he doesn't. Then he starts meeting people. And they seem alright, except when they punch him in the fucking guts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I - A Failure At Everything

* * *

* * *

#### i'm bad behavior but i do it in the best way

* * *

* * *

Pete’s story is stained glass. When he tried majoring in creative writing, he learned about vignettes, tiny flashes of memory, poignant, sweet, saturated in color and sound and feeling. He wrote a poem back then that said his life was just a film reel of vignettes. It’s still up on his wall. That’s why when he’s told to talk about himself he does it in stops and starts, small details mixed with big, vague ideas. He doesn’t know how to anchor himself in his own history. He doesn’t know where ‘past’ ends and ‘present’ begins and even if he did he’d still be drowning in it. 

“Tell me about your mother,” is the Voice of Reason. The Voice of Reason is Pete’s new psychologist (who else would say those words?). Pete’s psychologists are always new. Pete doesn’t know why he does this to himself. He doesn’t understand why he gets himself a new one every time he moves (three big ones since he dropped out.) He almost doesn’t answer the question because he’s staring at the carpet which is the same yellow-flecked blue-grey as every psychologist’s office from before the two thousands. 

“She was crazy,” he’s saying, before he even knows it. Psychologists have this magic where they do that; they get you to talk and then you’re talking and you don’t stop and sometimes it doesn’t even make sense and a lot of the time for Pete he isn’t even telling the truth, he’s just trying to manufacture a problem so he and the psychologist can manufacture a solution and continue the round-and-round-and-round-and-round process. Pete’s good at keeping a degree of separation between his awareness and himself. He likes distance.

“Crazy? Do you mean she was mentally ill?” the psychologist says and Pete avoids looking at her face, he looks out the big banked window at the side of the office, scuffs his toe against the leg of his cushioned-but-still-uncomfortable chair. The psychologist (Pete’s forgotten her name) leans back in her desk chair. The metal and plastic squeak.

“I don’t know. We didn’t talk a lot about that kind of thing,” Pete says. That one’s true.

“I take it you didn’t have a good relationship.”

“No,” Pete says. True.

“Your father?” 

Pete shakes his head. He laces and unlaces his fingers, rests his chin on them as he supports them steepled over his knees. 

“A voice,” Pete says, “When I sleep.” True.

“Is he dead?”

“No.” Probably true.

“Have you ever met him?”

“Yes.” Lie.

“Do you have a good relationship with your father?”

“Yes.” Lie.

“Is there a history of substance abuse in your family?” the psychologist asks. She clicks her nails against each other. They’re more genuine than her smile, and he’s pretty sure they’re four inches long. Psychologists always have claws.

“No.” Lie.

“When did you stop sleeping regularly?”

“I don’t know,” Pete says. He wants to bring his knees up but there’s mud on his shoes from the rain. He stares at the uneven seam of sealant between the windowpane and the window frame. 

“You don’t know?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever slept well?”

“I don’t know. I sleep better next to someone.” True. Pete sets a metronome most nights when he tries to fall asleep now, fake a heartbeat in the room.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?” The psychologist’s eyebrows raise into her hairline and disappear. They’ve gone on vacation. 

“I don’t think so,” Pete confirms.

“Tell me about your mother, Pete,” the psychologist has come full circle now. She’s run out of material, Pete thinks, she’s doing the rounds to get through the larger half of the hour he’s forced them both to sit there for.

“I don’t know,” he says, by way of starting, “She’s beautiful.” He’s not sure why that’s the first thing he thinks of to say about her. (Second, after crazy.)

“But not in a kind way,” he continues, “She’s like a foreign poison which only affects some people. She’s a coyote in a chain collar. She’d leave people well enough alone if she weren’t chained. I think she’s still all wild and pretending to be a dog makes her a fucking bitch.” Truth.

“Did she hurt you?”

“In what way?”

“Physically?”

“No.” Truth.

“Did she make you feel bad about yourself?” 

“No. I feel awesome.” Lie.

“Then why are you here, Pete?” she drops his name again and he knows she’s doing it to get him to like her. Pete knows almost every psych trick in the book. He’s been on this side of the barrel of this gun for years. It’s probably an excuse for him to hear himself talk. Sometimes he thinks he just likes to bleed for people. It doesn’t matter if it’s genuine (or fake).

“Because I’m going through the motions of being a real human being.”

“Why do you feel like you’re not a real human being?”

Pete just shrugs, because that’s a big question and he’s not sure how to vocalise all the intricate details of. He pulls at the hood of his hoodie a little, feels the metaphorical noose tight on his throat.

“Pete, just, tell me about yourself. What you’re here for. What you want to work on. I can’t help you if you don’t want to work with me.” And here’s the whole speech. Pete’s heard the basis of the ‘You’re here for a reason you have to work for your salvation’ speech half a dozen times. 

“Tell me why I can’t sleep,” Pete says, he leans forward on his hands again. 

“Are you on any medication?” she asks.

“No.” Half-truth.

“How many cups of coffee do you have in a day?”

“Two, three. Maybe four.” Pete just shrugs. 

“Any medical conditions which might cause discomfort sleeping? Surgery or injuries?”

“No.” Truth.

“Has your personal life been stressful recently?”

Pete shifts. He’s moved halfway across the country. He’s lost everything, been given it back, and had it taken again. He’s falling apart at the seams and picking himself back up so he can sew himself back together. Mock reanimation on puppet strings.

“Is it about the girl?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

The egg timer goes off. Pete feels a rush of relief, he gets up. The psychologist bites her nail when she’s off the clock, the pull of her lips is just minorly untightened. The small things. Pete knows they both hate this, they have better places to be on Saturday at five AM. 

Except he doesn’t.

As he steps into the quiet streets of Colorado Springs pre-morning rush, blinking blearily at the light, Pete Wentz realizes he’s twenty, has no friends, no stuff, hardly has a place to live, a shitty corporate job, and, to top it all off he’s the new guy in town.

He came to Colorado to see the place where the earth was rent in two. And while he is ceaselessly impressed, it still doesn’t really feel any different in the end. The same old city feeling. The same old loneliness. He’s just putting his far off thoughts on mountain peaks instead of on pedestals. There’s nothing keeping him here. His lease is off the books. He wonders if he’d even be missed if he disappeared from his job. 

He crosses the street and starts walking, thinking he’ll end up catching the bus after grabbing a coffee and buying himself some more pens, since he’s so far out of the house anyway. He almost doesn’t really notice the venue he almost walks by until the door opens and there’s this tiny guy attempting to drag a stool which is pretty much twice his size over the doorstop. He’s struggling with it and Pete can’t help but pause and by the time he’s paused he’s kind of obligated to go help the guy, so he does, even though Pete’s also pretty small. They can handle a stool though. That stool ain’t got shit on them.

“Hey, thanks,” the guy says, tucking long hair behind his ear as he huffs a bit, has a lip piercing, and then Pete’s turning his head to check out the guy’s ink. Stool guy turns and pulls up his sleeve so Pete can look his full sleeves over.

“No problem, any time. I’m Pete.” 

“Andy.” They shake hands. 

“Do you work here?” 

“Yeah. Not tonight. I’m helping break down from last night and setting up for ticket sales this morning then I’m free to go.”

Pete smiles at him. “Anyone good play last night?”

“It’s mostly indie stuff right now. There was a great punk show a couple nights back, though.” 

“Good to know the scene’s alive here.”

“Undead, more like,” Andy quips, with a kind little type of smirk on his lips. Pete decides Andy is the best kind of person. 

“Where are you from?” Andy asks, then.

“Chicago, originally, I’ve moved a lot though. I’m just here because I hear there’s a big half-human population here. And I’ve got a friend who said it was nice out here.”

“I’m Hephaestus’, you?” Andy says, leaning against the door.

“Morpheus.”

“Is that why you look so tired?” Andy pauses after he’s said it, realizing how he probably sounds like he’s prying probably. 

“I think that’s probably just that I haven’t slept in a few days,” Pete says. Andy’s eyes flicker with a gentle concern and Pete already kind of feels like his best friend. 

“I should go,” Pete says, before he can get attached, before he can form connections. 

“Catch you later, man,” Andy says, with a bright, kind smile. 

The day slips away over the hills. Pete goes to work at eleven PM. Pete comes home at seven AM. He does not sleep. He’s exhausted and he’s at that part of the Cycle (the process by which Pete sleeps; days on end where his body cannot manage it, sometimes weeks or more, then he crashes, hard, for just enough time to make his body capable of forward movement again) where it becomes unbearable. He feels his heartbeat in his eyelids. 

It’s noon on Sunday, he can’t close his eyes. He’s gripping a cup of coffee from his shitty single serve coffee machine and pacing the entire length of his shitty single serve apartment and he doesn’t know what to do with his time. 

He catches a bus and goes to the Black Sheep, because what else does he have to do? Andy’s not there, so Pete catches the bus back and just doesn’t get off at his stop. He lets the bus take him toward the mountains, gets off in sight of huge red stone peaking out of the ground beyond greco-roman styled buildings set up on the hill, like bloodied bones behind fake teeth.

Pete ends up in a coffee shop, buying a double shot of whatever their strongest caffeine is. The woman behind the counter has dark hair and wild eyes and has ink tracked into her skin down her left arm, her shoulder emblazoned with a rooster’s head, crest red and lines dark. Pete leans over the counter, smiles his best predatory smile.

“What’s your name?”

“Lindsey,” she says, she doesn’t look up from writing his name on the cup.

“That doesn’t fit you at all,” he’s purring when she turns her back on him to actually do the coffee. They’re the only ones in the shop. She definitely doesn’t seem interested, so Pete sighs, gives in, changes course. 

“So what are all the white buildings up on the hill?” 

“Garden of the Gods Institute,” she doesn’t turn back to say it.

“A college?”

“For divinity’s children.”

“For what now?” Pete cocks his head, drumming his fingers on the counter. The smell of coffee, bitter and dark, is making his stomach turn a little. He’s still dizzy from exhaustion. He hates it, feels fake and wrong, like the chemical makeup of his body overbalanced.

“Divinity’s children. Godchildren. Demigods.”

“Oh. Do you go there?” Pete gives her a friendly smile as he digs his wallet out and she turns around to face him, eyebrow quirked.

“I will next semester.”

“Morpheus, here. Who?” 

“Deimos,” Lindsey says, with a grin a little more wild and unhinged than her eyes are and Pete suddenly understands, his blood runs a little cold but he keeps smiling. 

“So,” Pete says as he receives the coffee and gives her a five, telling her to keep the change and rummaging around for another single or two to stick in the tip jar, “Is there anything decent to do around here?” 

“My band’s playing the Loft tonight at nine.” Lindsey gives him that little smile that screams ‘I’m getting something out of you, but I’ll be cute while I do it and you’ll do it for me.’ and Pete willingly plays into it.

“What kind of music do you play?”

“Synthpunk,” Lindsey says, with a little wink when Pete slips a tip into the jar and nods thoughtfully. 

“Where’s the loft?” 

She writes directions on a coffee sleeve and hands them over, ushering Pete out of the shop when a blonde guy comes in. 

Pete ends up slumming around for a little while until it starts raining, then he catches a bus to anywhere again because he’s got hours to kill before the show and time might kill him if he doesn’t get a move on. 

He ends up getting off in front of some headshop named something edgy, and buying himself a pipe and some papers and a pack of American Spirits because even if he doesn’t smoke so often as some, he’s been yelled at for bumming smokes often enough he knows to keep a pack around. 

And maybe he gets just a little bit of a rush going into places like this because what would his mother think? What would his probably-not-girlfriend think? It doesn’t matter. He’s alone, now. 

Pete’s alone in the middle of nowhere. He’s a thousand miles from anywhere he’s ever been and he’s got no friends. He’s a failure at everything and he’s alone.

He tries to brand himself as a trailblazer, he tries to tell himself he’s a lone wolf who loves it. But he’s alone. And Pete isn’t a lone wolf. 

Pete’s just roaming looking for somewhere he should be. 

He stops at the bookstore-cafe-bar a few blocks down as the clouds are closing in and curtaining the world in gray. 

The store is packed, cluttered, and smells like mothballs and dry beer. There’s a guy in white shades behind the counter, leaning over the linoleum countertop and sucking on a grape tootsie pop. He looks supremely bored. Pete’s pretty sure he’s never met anyone so tall, and the guy’s all splayed out across the counter to the point where he’s a little shorter than Pete. He’s all dark skin and high cheekbones and kind of exactly the type who makes Pete’s stomach shiver. 

The guy, only stationed maybe six feet from the door, sees Pete the second he comes in (the door chimes a really grating, high pitch). Pete can see something spark in his dark eyes, and Pete just grins a half-grin half-smirk which shows off his teeth. He doesn’t hide the slide of his eyes down the guy’s arm, then from his shoulder down his ribs (he’s wearing a women’s Broncos t-shirt, Pete’s pretty sure, it’s pretty ridiculous considering the kid looks seventeen at most and he’s holding himself with his shoulders wide and his chest open) to his hip. The guy slides the earbud out of his ear and raises his eyebrows at Pete.

“Hey, see what you’re looking for or do you need some help?” he says with a smirk.

“Where’s the poetry section?” Pete asks, already playing with the pen in his pocket. He turns on the almost-predatory grin again. 

“Better show you,” the guy says, coming around from behind the counter and leaving a purple iPod there, “I’m Gabe.”

“Pete.” He grins up at him, and holy shit, it’s a whole fucking lot of ‘up’ if he thinks about it, the guy’s got almost a foot on him. Okay, he might be rethinking the whole ‘so perfect and attractive’ thing. That’s a little intimidating. 

But Gabe doesn’t wear it intimidating; he slouches and leans in and he’s too loose to be read as aggressive. Still, both hands have knuckles rubbed raw and red, scabbed in places.

“Hey Pete.” 

“Hey Gabe,” Pete smiles, catalogs all the information and ignores it. 

“Poetry, eh?” Gabe looks at him over his shades.

“Poetry,” Pete confirms, and follows Gabe to the back corner of the store. 

“College boy?” Gabe says, leaning against one of the poetry shelves. Pete snakes a hand around his side to grab a book from behind him. Now’s the part where he plays just a tiny bit hard to get. He closes off the slightest bit. Turns his attention to the book.

“Nope,” Pete says, eyes still on the book of Dickinson poems. It’s not like he hasn’t read it all before and hated it but this is part of the ploy. 

“Where do you go to high school then?” Gabe asks, and Pete snort so hard, bending forward to start cackling that he hits his forehead hard against the shelf, but he can’t stop laughing because a guy who was trying to be suave just asked him where he fucking goes to high school. 

“Fuck,” Gabe says, and Pete can’t stop laughing. He has to gasp for air and goes down to his knees because he can’t keep the balance. 

“Holy shit, man,” Pete says, his eyebrows coming up, he’s almost tearing up, “Oh my god.”

“Did I fuck up?” Gabe says, he may look like he’s been doing this shit for years at first, but Pete definitely sees the little flicker there of ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do’ in the tensed muscles at his jaw and the upslant of his eyebrows. 

“No, no,” Pete says, but he’s still gasping for air and clutching at his sides, “You just. You might be too young for me.”

“I’m seventeen!” Gabe almost looks like he’s been kicked. Pete shakes his head, straightening up finally, having to suppress the laughter. 

“I’m going to head back up west, I think,” Pete says, setting the book back on the shelf. 

“Wait, uh,” Gabe says, looking the slightest bit panicked, “Would you give me your number?” 

It takes every ounce of Pete’s self control not to start laughing again, he pulls the pen out of his pocket and writes his number on Gabe’s palm. 

“Thanks,” Gabe says, and he gives this proud little genuine smile. Pete feels like maybe there are more real people in this town than he anticipated. 

Pete loiters around the library and then the college campus until nine o’clock, when the stars are just starting to blanket the almost-not-really-a-big-enough-city-to-cover-the-stars light pollution.

He remembers Chicago with a vague, empty feeling. He remembers the sky, like corn husks stretched around the edges, milky and bleeding out the stars. He remembers feeling alive, sneaking out to go to shows. He remembers feeling youthful and full of faith. Faith in the city, faith for passion, faith in cold nights and warm days and his first cigarettes. 

Faith in reckless kisses and the drumset between his ribs, bass strings tight against his lungs. He wonders where it went because standing in front of the Loft he just feels like he’s going through the motions. He has for months. 

He wonders what he’s doing there. He wonders why he isn’t in bed trying to sleep before his shift. He wonders what he’s doing in fucking Colorado in fucking 2005. He feels like he’s wasting whatever youth he has left but he doesn’t know if he has any left and that’s terrifying. He doesn’t know if he’s out of life and love or just estranged from it. He wonders if being disowned by it might feel worse than just having run out.

A tall black guy is bouncing at the door, and he directs Pete to ticket sales. Pete buys his ticket and slides past the guy, looking around for Lindsey or anyone who looks half decent to listen to. There’s a dark haired kid in eyeliner who looks Pete’s age tucked in a back corner with a notebook who keeps glancing up at the stage like he’s anxious for it to start. (Pete jots that down in his memory for future reference). 

Beyond that, the crowd looks tame; makeup on the women, t-shirts or polos on the men. Pete can’t help but be a little disappointed because Lindsey promised punk and this looks a bit more like mountain yuppie than anything.

Then she takes the stage, and she’s got a bass and the eyeliner kid at the back is suddenly attentive, interested, torn away from whatever’s in that notebook. The guy who takes the mic is mostly blonde, and probably older than her by at least a decade, but he doesn’t look boring; done up in checks and stripes. They explain it’s their first set alone. 

The show isn’t great. The vibe’s all wrong. Or maybe it’s him. It’s probably him. It has been lately. He’s heading for the door before the last song when he gets shoved into the wall. He kind of topples, scrambles for footing and halfway goes down, one knee heavy against the hardwood. 

“Hey, fucker,” he’s snarling at the guy who fell into him, some asshole in denim and leather and who has a haircut and beard which scream ‘suck my dick but I definitely won’t go down on you’. The guy turns on him, ignoring the guy who just punched him and he bears down on Pete and Pete immediately rethinks what he just did because holy shit if Gabe had a foot on him, this guy has two, and at least a hundred pounds.

“Oh shit,” he says, rhetorically. His arms fly up to protect his face and the guy goes for his gut. 

“Backup please!” there’s a loud shout behind demin-and-leather dude and then the guy’s howling in pain and none other than Andy is holding the goliath’s shirt collar, dragging him down to look him in the eyes, soft, still kind but firm now. 

“I think it’s time for you to go,” he’s saying, “Before I call the cops on you and your friend here.” 

Pete lets his eyes go to the guy who punched demin-and-leather, who looks a bit smaller but definitely more malicious, he’s being held by two guys, and breathing hard, struggling against the hold, the one Andy’s got is mostly being compliant.

“I don’t fuckin think so,” he spits at Andy’s face.

Mostly.

He goes in to lunge at Andy, but Andy’s already low and letting the guy pretty much throw himself over his shoulder, he comes up, rolling and dropping the guy flat on his back behind him. 

“Please?” Andy says, dusting his hands off as the guy slowly raises himself up to his feet again. He doesn’t go for Andy a second time, just nods, going to grab his coat and disappearing toward the door. Andy sighs, looking over at Pete with a bit of sympathy and offering him a hand. 

“I don’t have to kick you out, too, do I?” 

“Nah, you just saved my ass. That’d be poor form, huh?” Pete says, and he gives a little warm smile.

“It’s my job,” Andy says, hooking a thumb through the fabric of his shirt next to where it says in big, white block letters ‘BOUNCER’, front and back. 

“You wanna catch a drink when you get off? My treat, for that,” Pete says, because maybe he’s getting attached. Maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe he’s tired of being a lone wolf a little and Andy seems like good people. Really good.

“Uh, I’m not,”Andy goes pale, raising his hands with his palms out, waving them a little, and Pete cocks his head. 

Then it hits him. 

“Oh, shit, shit. No. No. That’s not what I meant. I just. I’m new in town and I don’t have any friends and I just,” Pete shrugs, giving him a little guilty smile. 

“Oh, uh,” Andy looks like he just stepped on a dog’s tail, “Then. Then, yeah. I’ll have to fill an incident report for that, and that’ll probably take me to the end of my shift. You mind waiting?”

“Yeah, no, no. Of course not,” Pete says and he’s grinning because someone actually wants to spend time with him. 

Andy and Pete become fast friends, and it only takes a month for Pete to know most all of Andy’s friends. Andy is nineteen and doing better in his life than a lot of thirty-year-olds. He also has some really great friends. One of which just so happens to be Gabriel Saporta, a miserably employed senior at Andy’s old high school with a pension for catching people just where they can’t get out of his way. And, apparently, for skipping classes to go hiking with a large throng off his friends. 

Gabe’s caught Pete between a rock and a hard place. His back is flush against the rough red rock which litters the skeleton of the earth under the foothills which Garden of the Gods is set in. It’s gripping at his old New Found Glory t-shirt and scratching at his arms and Pete can’t actually be bothered enough to care because he’s a little too hot-and-bothered. The head of Gabe’s cock is peeking out of his waistband, hot and red and leaking pre-cum and he has his hard-on pressed to the inside of Pete’s hip, his lips at the crook of Pete’s neck. 

Pete’s hands would be all over him if Gabe hadn’t just kind of casually laid one forearm across Pete’s wrists and pressed hard down into the rock and just like that kind of completely immobilized them. Pete almost hated how easy it was. 

Gabe’s hips jump against Pete and Pete bites back a groan, because fuck. It’s been a while. 

Pete breathes heavy, and Gabe’s mouth finds his and Pete can’t bite back the sound that comes out of his mouth because for how inexperienced Gabe seems to be with the picking up strange guys at work thing right now, it all goes away when it comes down to hips and hearts. 

Pete’s heart is in his throat and his fingers are humming with energy, but they’re going cold at the tips under Gabe’s arm as Pete rolls his hips up, slow, soliciting a long, hot almost-whine against his bottom lip, and then Gabe’s teeth are sinking in half-careful, half-desperate and their hips move together and they’re both breathing too hard. 

Gabe’s free hand slides down to where Pete’s shirt is riding up over the ink at his lower belly and not even bothering to trace the design (Pete figures he can’t see it anyway), he undoes Pete’s fly. Pete’s hips are bucking in anticipation when Gabe’s free hand slams them back, pulling away to look Pete straight in the eyes. Their breath meets in the space between them, ragged and haggard. 

“You jerk off?” Gabe’s saying and Pete gives him literally the most confounded look he’s ever used in a situation like this. 

“Who doesn’t?” 

“Fair point,” Gabe says, and he’s obviously losing a little composure as he rolls his hips slow against Pete’s. Their cocks rub through denim. Pete knows the exact moment Gabe’s cock brushes his stomach for the wet little track of precum just under his navel. 

Then Gabe’s pushing him down, letting his wrists free (they ache and pound for a moment and are suddenly rushed with warm like the rest of him), and tangling a hand in his hair.

“Suck,” is all Gabe says, and Pete’s breath goes out like a light. He looks up at Gabe and gives his best smirk but Gabe just shoves his head down again, using his other hand to pull his cock the rest of the way free. Pete doesn’t have to be told twice, and he doesn’t bother being fancy, because that’s obviously not what Gabe wants or they wouldn’t be fucking against a literal national natural landmark in a public park while their friends get high a bit further down the trail.  
Pete sucks the head of Gabe’s cock into his mouth and swallows back the taste of precum with a tiny shudder, his hands finding the base and stroking in unison. He lets his eyes flick to Gabe’s again, and Gabe’s thrown his head back, whispering in a language Pete doesn’t know. (But damn does it sound good. He feels his cock throbbing against his waistband.) 

The first bob makes Gabe’s head tilt forward again and Pete watches as he tries to struggle to say something, but he’s lost in swearing and (what Pete presumes to be) Spanish again. Pete’s eyes close.

“You should,” Gabe finally manages, and Pete starts bobbing a little faster, because if Gabe can still talk, he’s not doing his job right, “Fuck.”

“You should,” Gabe tries again and Pete feels the hand in his hair tighten, pull, and when Pete doesn’t unwrap his lips from Gabe’s cock, yank him back. 

“Jerk off for me,” Gabe finishes, when Pete meets his eyes, tongue still flicking half-desperate while he looks up at Gabe. Gabe’s practically shivering now, and he holds Pete away from his cock with a fist in his hair until Pete’s hand is slid into his boxers, slipping against his dick with a slick little sound.

Pete pulls himself back onto Gabe’s shaft, and slowly slides down, eyes flicking up to meet Gabe’s, he doesn’t stop where he has been; lets himself take all of Gabe, and Gabe starts shaking, literally. He curses, and babbles a little more and Pete’s speeding the hand against his own cock when he swallows around Gabe’s and then Gabe is thrusting forward, Pete fighting not to gag or splutter, his throat working against Gabe. 

Cum hits the back of his throat without hitting his tongue, something Pete’s a little thankful for and he lets go of any holding back he was doing with his own attention. He whines around Gabe’s dick as Gabe slides it out of his mouth, leaving his lips slick. 

Pete’s shuddering to cum in his pants then, and his vision goes white hot, he closes his eyes hard against it. There’s a pinprick of light. A house in Chicago flashes through his head. A pinprick of a reading lamp.

Pete collapses in a heap of heavy breath and hot red dirt grinding into his cheek. He’s still more or less on his knees. His hand stays still and loose against his cock, twitching and oversensitive. 

“Shit,” Gabe murmurs, and Pete lets his shoulders slump as he slowly pushes his face away from the ground and stands up, wiping the cum off his hand and onto his jeans. Because it’s pretty damn obvious anyway, and what the fuck does he care if he gets just one more stain. 

“Yeah,” he concedes, he grins, looking up at Gabe, and Gabe looks back with the same smile. (These smiles say ‘that was a good fuck but you’re not my soulmate, let’s do this again. Casually.’)

Pete lights one of his spirits and bums one to Gabe. Gabe doesn’t know how to smoke. He pulls the smoke into his cheeks, then exhales. Pete realizes how young he is when he points this out, and Gabe goes bright red. He’s just pretending to be something he’s not. Pete knows that. But, he reasons with himself, so is everyone.

* * *

* * *

#### they say we are what we are, but we don't have to be

* * *

* * *

Andy doesn’t mind Pete coming back covered in cumstains, neither do any of his friends. That’s kind of nice. 

Pete leaves the hike early because he starts to lose his legs. He’s so tired. 

As nice as public hook-ups sometimes are, they’re unreasonable for him. He knows it. Pete needs to fuck and sleep. It’s the only way his physiology forgives that much lost energy. 

He only gets an hour in when he gets home, but it feels like heaven. 

Then there’s work, and that trip to the bank he’s been putting off and going to whatever show Andy’s bouncing for and before Pete knows it, the week slips out from under him and he’s left stumbling and wondering where time went. Then before he can blink he hasn’t slept and it’s December, frigid cold and more snow than Pete’s seen in his entire life. 

The winter in Colorado that year is harsh; it’s the year of the seven foot blizard. It’s the winter of Pete being trapped in his apartment building for two days straight with the power off. It’s the winter of fuck, even the native Coloradans are getting cabin fever when the snows aren’t letting up by April.

Sometime mid-January Pete picks up a rattling cough which haunts him through the end of the season. He stops writing. Sometime in December he starts picking up bad habits which date back to Chicago. 

He starts missing Her one night when it’s too-light outside and he’s stuck inside and it’s too cold and he might be too high to function and he convinces himself he’s going to die right there. 

When he realizes his first thought after ‘I’m going to die’ is ‘I need to call Her’, he does.

She doesn’t pick up.

Pete stops writing poetry after that. He stops returning Andy’s calls. He and Gabe call off whatever almost-thing they have going on just before Gabe graduates that spring. Because they’re different. Because Pete’s pretending to be something he’s not. Because Gabe’s met someone. Because they don’t make each other happy. They don’t even sleep together. He spends more time with Lindsey and her (boy?)friend Gerard than anyone else. He does cocaine. He goes to parties every other night. He stops going to Andy’s shows.

The spring is wet. Pete stays inside, he’s prescribed a type of benzo he doesn’t take. He prefers the coke, weed, and booze. He develops a resentment of non-self-medication. He starts to hate anyone who doesn’t believe in him. Dirty shows up in May. Dirty’s an old friend, from Chicago. He’s been everywhere Pete has. He follows him until he gets his fill. He’s got a kind of comforting, terrifying familiarity about him. He tends to come back when Pete starts fucking up again.

The summer is arguably worse than the winter. Pete stops avoiding Andy because he’s so nice. Andy buys his way into a new art co-op near the college that Lindsey’s frontman is starting, he moves to the dorms, and Pete has an excuse to be on campus now. He sleeps five times all summer, it’s getting worse, and he feels like he’s on the outside looking in when Andy and Ray talk about classes, when Gerard curls himself into a fist against the cold with his hands wrapped around a coffee mug and talks about his brother. He finds himself stuttering about people he used to know into empty rooms. He feels like he’s lost in a great sea of land and he’s so far from the last place he knew he’ll never know where he’s going. He strayed too far from his path and nowhere’s gone forever. He hasn’t got a compass. Ray has a smile full of sunshine, and Pete’s just got a head full of rain most days. 

When summer starts going to fall, Pete feels empty. The trees don’t catch fire and live on in their last days here, they’re immortal, evergreen. They stand sentinel on the hills and don’t give any chance for retribution. The more drugs he’s on the more often he sleeps, Pete gets lost in his head. He goes days without talking to anyone, he goes weeks without sleeping, he’s fighting a losing battle against his imagination. He’s thinking up things to go against him in a coliseum between his ribs.  
He feels like a coyote in a chain collar. He feels like there’s something in him deep down which might be alive, or which is at least fighting to hold on, but everything else has gone dead. The brambles around his neck feel like a noose. 

Sometime in November, the psychologist asks it again. 

“Tell me about your mother,” she says, and Pete feels like something’s fractured in him. The baseball hits the windshield.

Time slows.

“I’ve told you about my mother,” he says. 

“But not in a long time. You just said you feel like a coyote in a chain collar. When we first met you said your mother was a coyote in a chain collar. Why are you using the same metaphors for yourself? Do you feel like you’re hurting people how your mother hurt you?”

Pete doesn’t know. He honestly doesn’t. He hadn’t thought about it. He doesn’t feel like he’s snapped at anyone. Andy’s the only one who seems concerned about him and Pete tries to treat him right. Everyone else doesn’t care about him, right?

“No, that’s not it,” and he’s saying it before he knows it’s true but it is.

“What is it, then?”

“I think we’re the same kind of broken. When you map out DNA we’re all the fucking same, some people are just more the same than others. What makes her and me different is we’re broken. We’re proxies. We’re not real people.” 

“What makes you say that?”

“We’re malfunction. We’re the poison in the hourglass, we’re sure to happen sometime. Deformity, casualties of evolution, all that. We’re just the sad side of statistics,” Pete says, and he’s gesticulating, his breath soft against his lower lip. 

“I don’t think you’re deformed.”

“Then why are you still wasting your time on me?” Pete asks, and she lowers her gaze to her nails. They’re red and green. For Christmas. Even though it’s only November. She’s like the seasonal aisle at a grocery store. Pete fucking hates her.

“I’m not wasting my time.”

“Oh, that’s right. You get paid to be here,” Pete says. He says it level, without much venom. 

“You’re right. I do.”

She suggests rehab. Pete doesn’t go. Pete doesn’t really care. He knows his life isn’t going anywhere. And then Andy suggests they start doing something on Thursdays, the day  
Andy doesn’t have either work or classes. (Pete’s still not sure what he’s majoring in.)

Pete spends his spare time in the month of December visiting every male bathroom on the Garden of the Gods campus to scrawl lyrics and poetry across all of the bathroom stalls in sharpie and crashing on Andy’s couch, prowling the residence hall anxiously at 4AM. It takes two months for Andy to talk him into it. 

It takes three for Pete to start writing poetry again and realize what he wants to do with Thursday. It’s March by the time Pete’s sitting on Andy’s couch and is sober enough to remember what the point of him making Andy stay home tonight was besides to watch Nightmare Before Christmas for the third time since Halloween ended. 

“Can we use your section of the art co-op for the Thursday night thing?” Pete asks, out of nowhere, he’s been up all night and he’s a mess, he’s got a paper bowl of cheerios propped up not far under his chin (Pete is the only reason Andy’s dorm has milk in the fridge), the spoon full of them halfway to his mouth, his eyes are fixed unblinking on Andy, who looks like he’s forgotten he even asked for a minute. He’s just gotten home from his morning class. He’s already dressed, and has a toothbrush in his mouth. His look of confusion lasts about fifteen seconds before he pulls his toothbrush out of his mouth and speaks around the suds.

“Uh, well I’d prefer nothing crazy happening there since, you know, not technically my property,” Andy says thoughtfully.

“Nothing crazy,” Pete assures, “Spoken word poetry night?”

“Seriously?” Andy asks, sitting down, Pete watches him force himself not to swallow the white foam in his mouth. 

“Yeah,” Pete says with a shrug, shoving cheerios into his mouth. He swallows pointedly, and Andy mimics subconsciously, spluttering and standing up, fleeing to the bathroom again with his toothbrush. Pete hears the faint sound of floss being unraveled and cut against the little nib on the package. (Pete’s pretty sure Andy is the only person he’s ever seen actually floss except his mom.)

When it gets Andy’s okay, it takes another half week for Pete to get his shit together enough to actually invite people, so they put it off to the next week. 

No one shows up the first week; it’s just Andy and Lindsey and Gerard and Pete. Gabe said he’d show up but he doesn’t. They end up smoking up and none of them brought poetry so it’s more of a get-together than anything. 

The next week, Gerard brings a poem, but Pete still hasn’t been writing so he’s forced to bring an old one he doesn’t even have the energy to revise. It’s shit and Pete knows it and he’s pretty sure the whole thing is just going to go under.

The week after that, people actually show up, here and there. High school kids, mostly, who think they’re the shit, and Pete can’t blame them. Some of them are half okay. 

And then there’s the first week Brendon comes, he’s new in the area, he says. He graduated early, he’s here for college. He has a house. He reads as a classic case of the tragic rich boy to Pete but Pete doesn’t say that and he’s glad he doesn’t. Brendon has the kind of voice Pete’s been looking for for years. It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough. 

Brendon reads poetry like a dream, and Pete hasn’t dreamed in a while and Pete makes him promise to come every week. Brendon does, and he invites friends, and by the week after the one after Brendon’s first, they’ve got a half-decent turn out. 

Pete spends his summer trying to sleep, tossing and turning on Andy’s couch, tossing and turning in his dusty bed, tossing and turning on the grass in the sun outside, tossing and turning on the benches outside of the Walmart he can’t seem to get the fuck out of his life. 

And he spends the summer trying to make himself write again, but it’s not coming and he doesn’t know why until She calls on the first of August, 2007. 

“I just want you to know I’m in town,” She says, as soon as he picks up the phone. She doesn’t even wait for him to say hello. 

“Chicago? I haven’t lived there for years.” 

“Colorado Springs, dumbass,” Her voice makes his heart quiver against his lungs. It makes all the pain come back.

“Wh…” Pete can’t make anything else come out of his mouth. He doesn’t know when he stopped breathing, just that he can’t jump start his lungs into functioning like lungs again now. He looks up at the sky. He wonders if God’s real or cruel. 

“If you want to hook up, this is my number.” 

The line goes dead. Vague static.

Pete doesn’t even make himself wait til the next day to call. He can’t. 

Looking at Her in his dusty, unused bed, She doesn’t fit. Looking at Her, he can’t make himself meet Her eyes. She doesn’t believe in him. She doesn’t love him. She just loves the way he looks in the right light. She makes him sick to his stomach. 

But his heart is Hers. She has it on a chain. She’s the collar around his neck. She makes it hard to breathe. 

They have makeup sex. Like they have every time they’ve seen each other since the Last Good Day. They tell themselves this will be the last time they’ll have to. When She lights one of his cigarettes after and starts talking, he crosses the room to open the window, and settles back down next to Her, he listens and runs fingertips over his scars. (She has a scar on her back. He doesn’t touch it.) He tries not to want to die. 

He tries so hard not to let Her have the power anymore but She does.

She leaves Her jacket like She’s going to come back. 

It’s a formality. It’s an echo of what they used to be. He kisses Her goodbye. 

When Pete gets out of the ICU he can’t really remember what happened (and he’s not sure why they just released him like that), but Andy seems overly concerned in the way that says he did it to himself. He feels groggy from the pills and disgusting after the pump and he just wants to sleep. Andy won’t let him go home alone so Pete goes to Andy’s dorm. 

He tosses and turns on Andy’s couch, but he can’t sleep, so Andy offers him the bed, and Pete tries with everything he has to listen to his pulse against the linen and to feel his heartbeat in his fingers and to multiply it, try to make that enough. It’s not. 

So he writes. He writes pages upon pages. He bleeds his heart out to bleed. Pete scoops his insides out until he feels like an empty room. Until he’s burnt everything down and can start from scratch. It’s what he needs.

_(My insides are copper and I'd kill to make them gold. Conversation got me here: another night alone in the city so make my bed the grave and shovel dirt onto my sheets. Every friend we ever had in common; I will sever the tie with you. You can thank your lucky stars that everything I wish for will never come true.)_

 

Pete wakes up in Andy’s bed at three-thirty AM with puncture wounds from the ICU and notebook pages full of his demons surrounding him. It shouldn’t be as refreshing as it is, but Pete wakes up feeling a little more alive.

He thinks about leaving, but he doesn’t want to worry Andy (who’s working, presumably), and he doesn’t know if he feels safe being exposed to the bigger world right now. He texts everyone who might be awake right now; Gabe (who’s just moved into Brendon’s house), Brendon, Lindsey, Gerard, Dirty, Andy, Ray, everyone.

He just feels alone and unsteady.

No one texts back until Gerard finally responds at five AM with a quick ‘Are you okay? Haven’t heard from you in a few days. Gotta go to class. Catch up with you later. -G’.

Pete doesn’t bother texting him back. He checks his Myspace. He bums around on the internet. He listens to slam poets on youtube. He tries to find something to give him some purpose.

He doesn’t.

He feels like a cigarette burning down. He’s running out of usefulness except for writing. He writes constantly now. That and the drugs are the only way to keep him away from the twisting pain in his gut.

The sign that week on the door for Bad Poet (as the poetry group’s begun calling itself), is ‘Boycott Love.’

He doesn’t think he’s going to go to Gabe’s party until Andy tells him he’s going and that Pete should come along and try his hand at sobriety in the face of the drunk throng. Pete thinks that’s bullshit but he doesn’t really want to leave Andy alone at a party like that (not because Andy can’t handle it, because Pete’s a good friend, and Andy’s his best friend, Pete’s pretty sure Andy thinks Pete’s his best friend, too) and he might as well see those people in a non-poetry place sooner or later.

He goes to visit the new demigod in town who he met with Brendon the other day first, though. Because new people always intrigue Pete. Because making friends is all he has.

He doesn’t have a hard time finding the motel, and he wants to say it’s not the horrid dreams he feels layered over the rest of his senses from the specific room that tips him off, but he’s pretty sure it is. (He picks up on a broken bottle, and a hundred tiny shards of glass before he shuts it out.)

The door is unlocked. Pete sits next to the tiny, fragile guy on the bed. He thinks he’ll just wake him up and be done with it, because this is probably the friend Spencer had been talking about, because this isn’t who Pete’s here for but he feels a little bit of responsibility over anyone having nightmares. (He’d change the dreams the guy’s having but he doesn’t have the energy. He doesn’t know what purpose it would serve.)

As soon as the guy’s eyes are open, his fingers are skittering over the bedside table to the pills there. He’s got the sleeve of pills out when Pete’s hand finds his wrist, gentle, firm. 

He’s trying to channel Andy.

“Slow down, kid,” he’s saying as soft as he can, he pulls the guy’s wrist away as soon as the guy drops the pills. 

“Who?” the guy asks, and Pete watches cogs turn behind brown eyes which look almost as tired as Pete feels. 

“Hey, I’m not here to like, murder you or whatever. You were having a pretty bad dream,” Pete says, and he’s trying to sound sincere and warm. Still trying to channel Andy. 

There’s something about the way the kid’s eyes flicker defiant that tells Pete he’s alive in a way Pete’s never really seen before. It’s astounding. 

“It might sound kind of crazy since you’re not from around here and--” Pete’s saying before the guy cuts him off.

“How do you know I’m not from around here?”

Pete stares at him, because, seriously? 

“You’re staying in a motel,” he points out.

“So?” 

Pete sighs. 

“I’m here to see Spencer.”

The guy’s eyes flash with something heavy, protective, defiant.

“Anything you can say to Spencer, you can say to me.” He obviously thinks Pete can’t read the fear and anxiety and aggression in his face, behind the tight pull of a flat expression. 

Pete wonders vaguely if he used to look like that. He examines the way the guy’s got a hunger behind it all. Like a fire still burning down the wick.

“I was just going to invite him to a weekly get together we have off campus near here. It’s for divinity’s children, though. Humans uh, aren’t allowed to attend unless we make special permissions,” Pete says, with a tiny shrug. 

He leaves not long after that, with an insistence to tell Spencer about Bad Poet. He finds Andy.

The bus takes forever; there’s been some sort of huge accident or something. Pete isn’t really sure, all he knows is that a bus ride that usually takes about five minutes takes him nearly an hour. He drags himself up the stairs to Andy’s dorm with tired limbs.

The streets are almost-quiet by the time they get off at the bus stop next to the Cobra House. 

Then Pete’s upstairs popping rohypnol with Gerard, and feeling dull and like he’s pretending to be alive. He feels like an electric candle compared to a real one. Undead mimicry.  
Casualties of evolution. 

He’s smiling at Gerard’s smoke skulls when he starts to feel the benzos work his blood. And then they’re headed back down into the wall of noise. Pete’s gaze scrapes through the partygoers. He lingers on the unfamiliar face in the crowd; a lanky, bespectacled would-be-dweeb who wears it all like some sort of minor sex god. (Ironic, considering Pete will learn later that Mikey Way is, in fact, a minor god.)

Then he’s being half-strangled and Gerard has a chokehold on his shirt. 

“Pete Wentz,” Gerard growls in his ear (Pete tries so hard to not find that attractive), “if you fucking touch my little brother, you will never know this earth again, and I will make sure there is a special place in the underworld picked out just for your sorry little fucking ass, understood?”

Pete shivers and grins like a fucking coyote. He doesn’t answer (he’s heard this threat a time or two, anyway) and by the time Gerard lets him go, the younger Way is gone in the crowd. (Damn shame, too.)

And then he’s off in the crowd and there’s alcohol flowing and he’s enjoying himself. He feels almost-alive. He feels like he’s at least imitating being real. He feels a little less like a ghost as he grinds body-to-body and drinks and smokes cigarettes with Gabe’s boyfriend and kisses strangers.

It’s when there are howls of beer pong in the background and Pete’s intrigued and filtering toward the back door where the howls are coming from that he runs into Her.

She’s right there, in the flesh, warm and real and holding a cup which he is sure contains ginger ale and vodka as it always does. He falls in love with her again.

She’s wearing the same hoodie as when he met Her. She’s chewing at her thumb just like then, and when She sees him something he can’t place flickers through Her body and Her eyes. It’s weird to see something foreign on Her. He thought he’d mapped the topography of Her long prior. He thought he knew Her. The shiver reminds him of his mother.

“Let’s talk,” She’s saying then. And he can’t do anything but follow Her to the corner by the speakers where She touches the corner of Her eye. She’s wearing the dark makeup around Her eyes that makes them look bruised. She wears ‘victim’ well.

He says nothing. He waits for Her to start. This is on Her terms. He fucked it up once already.

“I’m pregnant,” is what She says then and Pete’s blinking, clueless, confused at the configuration of those words because they’re capital F Foreign for Her. She is not a concept with which childbirth can be associated. He doesn’t connect the dots. He doesn’t have to.

“It’s probably yours.”

“Probably?” he manages to say it after he’s stared at Her, cold and confused and lost for a long moment, because he can’t handle this. 

“Probably.”

He feels like a scattered photo album. Like every second between them has just been disengaged from one another, him and Her are just molecules now, not people, not separate. The boundaries have been broken, the bridges burned.

“What… what’s going to happen?” he’s asking Her then, because that’s what he always asks when it comes down to things like this and She always says the same thing.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“Call me later,” She says, and he nods, he doesn’t know what to say. He reaches out for Her cup. She looks at him blankly. 

“Don’t drink,” is all he can manage, because even he knows that’s bad.

“You don’t own me anymore, Pete Wentz,” She says. She leaves with the cup. He feels cold and empty and eternal. Like this is the state of being now. Like it won’t ever be anything else.

Pete finds a corner in which to cry. That’s where Andy finds him. They don’t talk. The music’s too loud and Pete’s too raw and every pulse of bass from the speakers is tearing him apart. 

Andy pulls Pete into a hug, though, a solid one. One that puts Pete’s feet back on the ground. Andy is magic, Pete’s pretty sure. Magic in the best way.

Pete finds more booze, and then he finds Mikey Way. 

He’s pretty sure he’s abysmally unattractive right now, eyeliner tracked across his cheekbones and blotches under his eyes, but he guesses the time that’s thrown in his lap is better than any and when he catches Mikey Way on the way to get drinks (or whatever), Pete can’t help but fit his body right up against Mikey’s and start talking in his ear, grinning wide.

The words don’t matter. Mikey probably can’t hear them anyway, but Mikey Way puts on a gorgeous kind of debaucherous smirk. And Pete’s leaning in to ghost his lips along Mikey’s neck when Mikey slips away, back to fulfill whatever mission he’d been given. Disappointment coils in Pete’s gut.

A track of one of his poems that Brendon recorded what feels like centuries ago is playing through the speakers now. Pete doesn’t know what to do. He’s lost the purposes for which he was here.

And then out of nowhere Gerard is next to him and screaming something or other and Pete can’t help the coyote smirk which touches his lips, then vanishes because pain sprouts from his diaphragm through the rest of his body. He’s gasping for air, it’s been knocked out of him, hard and precise and there are spots in his vision and the room whirls. 

He doesn’t even feel the knee to his chest, he’s too preoccupied with trying to breathe. (The only way he’ll know it happened is secondhand reports and the bruise in the morning.) 

He goes down to his knees and he sees Gerard’s fist about to come down, he’s ready to roll out of the way, but then Andy’s there, with a mean, mean kick to the shin. (Pete has learned this is his go-to almost 100% of the time, and that it’s actually kind of badass on Andy despite the wimpy reputation of it. Pete’s seen him take down guys twice his size that way.) Pete totteringly picks himself up, gasping for air, and Gerard’s turning on Andy but Pete won’t fucking have that, so he slams his fist hard into Gerard’s temple and watches him crumble between them. 

Andy kinda grins at him, and Pete kinda grins back, because they’re both supposed to be some sort of pacifists but that was kind of fucking cool and anyway, he started it, and 

Pete kind of fucking feels alive.

They bail from the party early. Because nothing’s gonna beat that. They end up taking the bus to get milkshakes. Because Andy said he wanted to buy Pete a milkshake for crying and stress and because Pete can’t refuse a fucking milkshake.

It’s kind of a hassle to convince the guy who’s closing the place to actually let them buy milkshakes, but Pete tips nearly 50% cuz Andy’s buying anyway and the guy seems pretty happy with that as long as they get out fast. Which they do.

They end up in a poorly lit 24/7 record store. Pete didn’t know all-night record stores existed until now. It’s got a glass front, but it’s covered in Simple Plan and Nirvana posters so it’s impossible to see the inside and it feels like kind of exactly the place Pete wants to be drinking a milkshake at nearly one in the morning. He drags Andy in and rejoices at 

The Smiths playing as soon as he opens the door. A bell jangles somewhere. 

The front desk is empty, though there’s a blue satchel sitting there with a computer half-unpacked out of it, so Pete figures there’s some sort of staffer around. 

To be honest, Pete gets distracted from the whole ‘drinking of milkshakes’ part of the evening, because he’s pretty sure this place just became his favorite record store. He’s freaking out a little bit at the selection and hopping from bin to bin, CDs to vinyl and back again. He even ends up in their tiny corner of cassette tapes in the back, rifling through a little section of Suzanne Vega.

Somewhere in the interim, Pete loses both Andy and his milkshake, which is a problem, he’s pretty sure, but he’s a little too distracted by the store he’s pretty sure is now going to be the funnel for all his extraneous cash. 

Still, he ends up winding his way back through the aisles looking for where he set his milkshake down and maybe for Andy, too. 

And as he rounds a corner, there He is. Not God. Not Andy. But pretty close, because Pete’s almost certain the guy is an angel. He’s holding Pete’s paper milkshake cup with an existentially perplexed look. He’s wearing shorts and argyle socks and a grey cardigan. He’s got a hat pulled down so far Pete’s almost surprised he can see. Pete’s sure he can’t be a day over eighteen. And he’s gorgeous, red-blonde hair and the dorkiest overall style Pete’s pretty sure he’s ever seen. He wants to say hello. He wants to ask for the guy’s number or just ask him to come home with him or anything, anything to ensure he gets to observe more of him.

“You’re a fucking angel,” is what he says.

“What,” the guy says right back. He regards Pete with the same existential perplexed look, and then says, “Is this yours?”

“Oh, oh,” Pete says, reaching out for it, “Sorry, fuck, yeah.”

The guy smiles, and hands the cup back, “Don’t let it get away from you again, the records don’t like sugar. Keeps them up at night.”

Pete’s face goes hot and he can’t stop himself from grinning because holy shit. The guy is so sweet. 

“Is this your first time in? Sorry, I’m not used to late customers. Or customers, for that matter,” he says, and he looks genuinely apologetic. 

“Yeah, yeah. Just going home after a party, my friend bought me a milkshake cuz he’s the best friend ever. My name’s Pete.” 

“Hi Pete,” the guy says, and then, turning his head and looking at Pete’s face (presumably his eyeliner), “Have you been crying?”

“Yeah. I don’t know where my life’s going.” Pete just shrugs and kinda looks at the guy, who looks back, and gives him a soft smile. Something flutters in Pete. Hard.

“I don’t know if anyone does,” he says, “I try to tell myself that’s part of the fun.”

Pete’s quiet for a long time. It’s dark outside and the stars are burning on and Tom’s Diner is playing and the one constant in the universe has become that Pete wants to know this guy.

“Do you have a name?” he asks, finally, and the guy gives him a smile which could melt ice caps.

“Patrick. My name’s Patrick Stumph. With an H. The H is silent.”

And just like that, Pete Wentz is twenty-two and he’s a failure at everything and it’s 2007 and his heart just flew out of his chest and maybe he’s wasting his youth but he just found a purpose. He just found another reason to write poetry.


	2. Part II - Eighteen Going on Extinct

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Pete lets go.

* * *

* * *

#### i never meant for you to fix yourself

* * *

* * *

Pete apologizes to Gerard in the morning via text because Andy makes him. Andy also makes him leave the record store when Patrick’s shift changes because he knows how attached to things Pete gets. 

It’s starting to get cold again and Pete has memories of his cough and shudders. He briefly entertains the idea of moving but something’s keeping him here now. He doesn’t think it’s Patrick. He might be wrong.

Fall starts crisping the air, making it hard around the edges and gently crackling with static and chill. The disconcertingly evergreen trees remain. Pete almost wishes they wouldn’t.

He goes to dinner at Brendon’s house, with Travie, who’s crawled out of the woodworks again. He spends the morning crying on and off. He doesn’t think he wants to be a family. 

He doesn’t know what having a child entails but he knows he’s not strong enough to do it. He knows he’s a kid playing pretend at being adult. He can’t do this and he put up the pins, he has to knock them down. His moral compass is spinning on the axis of gravity and a confused sense of inner wellbeing. He has a glimmer of hope dressed in argyle socks and soft smiles, but even that won’t save him from himself. 

He doesn’t fall asleep when he comes home. He writes poetry about muses and sirens and beauty. He writes about how Gabe is so much different now; how two years can change so much. How three feels like centuries. He’s watched Gabe grow up. 

He writes about how he doesn’t want to be his mother. He doesn’t want to be a coyote in a chain collar and he doesn’t want to be a wolf among the sheep gnawing at the wool over his eyes. He writes about love, and loss, and he writes about Her but not as much as he expected to write about her. He has to buy a new notebook before he goes to bad poet. He buys five composition books at 67 cents each. $3.35

Ryan’s first Bad Poet, he doesn’t read. Pete isn’t sure why. People always seem to show up precocious and young, toddling and full of words, bursting at the seams. Pete plays Casimir Pulaski Day with him and Jon Walker on bass. Jon Walker won’t stop checking the kid out. Pete doesn’t have the heart to tell the guy he’s probably already taken by the other guy, Spencer, and even if he’s not, Brendon seems to have stakes there. He keeps his mouth shut. He’s plays sociable. 

Pete listens to Gerard’s poem with a dullness he never felt for Gerard before. Their ties have gone dusty, they’re over each other. That’s obvious. But Pete’s not one for grace. Pete will go down like the Titanic. He’ll go out with music and poise, and poor decisions. (Pete’s told himself he’s over Gerard a hundred times, but they always seem to come back together in some off-beat, off-wall way. They don’t always fuck; sometimes they just talk or smoke silent and together.)

It’s not in the poem, but he puts it in their anyway, after he’s introduced his act; 

“There’s always so much mystery in other people,” he says, and he’s looking straight at Gerard. Because Gerard didn’t accept his apology, because he resents him a little for existing like this. Because that’s the first thing Gerard really, actually said to Pete, alone and proper. They were at Brendon’s house and Pete had bummed a smoke and they’d spent months, years dancing around each other, sharing glances, but that second, all they wanted was connection. 

It’s a trainwreck thing, Pete thinks. He and Gerard are messes. They’re akin.

Pete glances down at his scribbles to remind himself to breathe, to remind himself where he is. 

“They did a study,” Pete lets his eyes find Andy, because Andy is steady, Andy is what he needs when She’s crashing through his chest. (Drive by straight through a sapling.) 

“And found that countless men would choose gambling over love if given the chance. Even more would choose pornography over love if given the chance.”

“We are cavemen, I don’t think that will ever change.” Deep breath.

“I wonder if the men they studied have ever really been in love. For whatever reason it seems like we’re against love.” His head’s going a little light from spilling breath. He curls around the microphone, slouching and pulling it close.

“Everyone equates it to gullibility or dirties it up, makes it cheap with lingerie shows and boxed candy. I’m writing Her from a Super 8 because I can’t go home.”

“It depresses me to think about,” he’s half-muttering trying to get his breath back, trying not to cry because he’s talking about Her and he can’t handle Her right now, “Sometimes love is just cheap, when given the chance many people choose cocaine over love.” He looks at Gerard again. Because Gerard looks pale. Because he knows Gerard has. 

Pete drops his eyes.

“I wouldn’t say that’s a bad choice,” he says it like a confessional, “the endorphins released during infatuation are similar to heroin. Oxycontin, found in newlyweds, is most like ecstasy, MDMA, every touch tingles.”

Pete tries to take another breath. He watches Ryan glance at Brendon and Victoria. 

“Love exists in powder, love exists in pills, we’re all fucking addicts,” he half-whispers into the mic, taking a sweep across the room. He knows everyone here. He doesn’t have to stutter about people who know people he used to know. He knows their vices. They’re his vices too. These people are just the same as he is. They’re all just strung out kids playing house. They’re pretending to be people they’re not. 

He finishes with a raw voice. He hangs out with Jon and Andy and Ryan. He’s stoned and late for work by midnight. He doesn’t care. He calls Her on break. At 4AM.

The line rings eight times, and then goes dead. He’s pretty sure She didn’t pick up, and then Her voice is soft on the other end of the line like She’s been crying and maybe he’s fallen for this half a dozen times but She sounds so sad. And that casts his whole life in black and grey ink. His heart is spilling against Her skin. She’s always had it, She always will. 

“Pete, what do you want?” She’s saying. And he wants to touch Her. He wants to run his fingers up the scar on Her back. He wants to feel the flaws in the sealant between the windowpanes of Her shoulder blades. He wants to prove She’s real. He wants to prove She’s imperfect. He doesn’t know what to say.

“What happens now?” he murmurs into the phone. He hears Her shift. He hears Her light a cigarette. He didn’t smoke until he knew Her. He didn’t feel like he had to burn himself alive from the inside until he fell in love with Her. He learned that flaw from Her, thinking back, he learned almost all his flaws because of Her.

“I don’t know,” She says. He’s quiet.

“Go to bed, Pete.” And the line goes quiet. He goes back into work. He tries not to think about Her. He tries not to want to die. He puts his thoughts to the monotony of shelves and carts. He finds some stability there. He calls Andy when he gets out of work. Andy’s getting out, too. When Pete tells him what happened, Andy asks him to come over to the dorms in the same voice he used when Pete was released from the ICU. Like he’s walking on broken glass and he doesn’t want to shatter it more. Like he might be a casualty. Pete tries not to resent it. 

“I’m getting moved to a triple,” Andy says, by way of explanation when Pete gives him a confounded look upon entering and finding most everything neatly in the process of being organized into boxes at the left side of the room. 

“That’s bullshit,” Pete says. 

“It means more room,” Andy says with a shrug, “And an actual living room and kitchenette.”

Pete has to admit that actually sounds better than the sort-of-not-really living room situation Andy has in the single dorm. 

“Who’re your roommates going to be?” 

“I dunno yet,” Andy says, he shrugs, “If they don’t like you I’m going to request a switch.”

Pete gives him a little genuine smile. 

“Thanks,” he says. He sneaks over to Andy, draping his arms over Andy’s shoulder and just kind of hugging him awkward from the side for a little while. Because it’s what feels right. 

“I think I’m going to go to the record store.”

“To see the guy?” Andy looks concerned. “He might not even be there.”

“It’s not like that,” Pete tells him. Probably a lie. He’s set in his ways. He’s the only thing he’s ever known. Sometimes Pete’s scared he’ll never change at all. 

Everything is too-quiet outside. It’s too-cold already. Pete doesn’t like the cold much after the last years. He doesn’t like being reminded of days left to his own devices with no option otherwise. He doesn’t like to remember feeling so literally trapped. It felt a little like the end of the world. He can’t help but be anxious. He brings some of his old vinyl which he’s heard enough of. Maybe they’ll take it off his hands, he thinks. It kind of feels like coming with an offering.

Patrick isn’t there, but, for some reason, the bouncer from the Loft who isn’t Andy is there, leaning over the counter. 

“Hey,” Pete says when he walks in the door, “I’m Pete.”

“Oh, hey there, Patrick said you came in the other day,” the guy says. He’s got really white teeth as he smiles wide at Pete and a symmetrical face that’s maybe a little intimidating, he reaches his hand out to shake, “I’m Wasalu. Most people call me Lupe though. What’ve you got there?”

It turns out Lupe is a friend of Patrick’s. He buys all of Pete’s records for the shop and tries to sell him half the store. Pete’s pretty happy to divulge him because he really hasn’t listened to music or been around someone so passionate about it in so long. Pete’s been there for an hour when he finally asks what’s on his mind. 

“Is Patrick coming in today?” 

Lupe grins at him, this smirky, conspiratorial grin. Pete decides he likes him. 

“He’s got the shift after mine,” he says, checks his watch, “He likes to be early. He’ll walk through the door in about seventeen minutes.”

Sixteen and a half elapse before Patrick actually does show up. Pete’s lost his legs a little, tired and head-spinning, so Lupe’s made him sit down on the counter while he gathers his things, and there’s the doorchime, and there Patrick is, grumbling about the cold and holding a hot beverage in a styrofoam cup which proudly reads ‘starbucks’ and wrapped in a parka vest and a cardigan under that and he’s ditched the shorts and he’s got some sort of tube scarf thing going on and he looks 110% as nerdy and Pete is so okay with this development and as he hops off the counter he feels a little underdressed. A little overstressed and unimpressive. 

“Hi!” he says, and Patrick nearly jumps out of his skin before turning a weird color of pink. 

“Oh,” he says, looking Pete up and down.

“Oh?” Pete’s heart’s sinking just a little. 

“Shoot!” he says it, dismayed, looking Pete over, “I’m sorry, that was rude. I just didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Where else would I be?” 

“I don’t know. Working? School?” Patrick says with this pathetic little shrug as he crosses to set his satchel down next to Pete. Pete gives him a big, sincere grin.

“I work for the corporate overlords in the middle of the night,” he says, “And I don’t go to school. What about you?” Because it’s as good an excuse as any. 

“I’m graduating a semester early from the high school downtown, so before winter break, then I’m going to Garden of the Gods Institute,” Patrick says, taking his phone and charger out and sliding the rest of his things under the counter, coming across Pete’s records. 

“Lupe, did you buy more stuff?” he calls toward the back room. There’s a muffled response neither of them can make out.

“I sold some records to him,” Pete says, with a little smile because being included feels nice, “Who’s kid are you?”

“Athena’s,” Patrick says, and of course it makes sense. His eyes are full of everything and everything about the way the gears move behind his eyes is intricate. He’s out of Pete’s league. Pete knows it. Patrick’s too smart and cute and well put together (graduating a fucking semester early?) for him.

“Morpheus, here,” Pete says, swinging his legs over the counter so he’s facing Patrick. He crosses his ankle over his knee and smiles an almost-crafty smile, “I’m the man of your dreams.”

Patrick laughs. His laugh makes Pete’s heart throw itself against his ribs like a caged bird.

Patrick feels like a thousand year old statue. Genuine and ancient. Like lost art, wise beyond his years. He talks about music like it’s mathematic equation. Pete tries his best not to stay the entire shift and fails miserably. The way Patrick weaves conversation is perfect, quiet and concise, and he turns pink the second he’s said anything even a little mean about someone who doesn’t deserve it, even if he’s joking. And it’s crazy. Even with all that he has this young beauty to him, this evergreen softness which says he’s been untouched or unphased by the harsher realities of being alive.

Pete tries his best not to fall in love and fails miserably. For the first time in years, Pete feels like something new has found foothold in his chest. He feels like fresh air and new rain. It’s exhilarating. 

It ends when he leaves the shop, steps out into the grey street, greyed heartbeat taking over for the green and growing one. 

Pete learns about Patrick before he leaves but not in the way Pete learns about most people; most of his questions are spun around. Patrick doesn’t seem to like to talk about himself too much. He drops his eyes a little when he does. Pete’s not sure if he’s embarrassed or what exactly, but he doesn’t want to screw anything up, he tries to curb himself before he pushes too much. 

Instead he learns in little ways. He watches the way Patrick’s hands ghost over certain tracks when they’re gushing over the CD bins up front. He keeps a steady eye on Patrick’s music taste, how Pete can get him passionate about things like how the sound balances between left and right and something in him keeps quivering like a bowstring, a leaf in the wind.

He’s shaking against his chains. Somewhere along the lines, talking to Patrick, he starts to forget to pretend to be someone he’s not. 

He learns about Joe; Patrick’s apparent best friend since the early years, who apparently vaguely knew Andy, which made Pete a little pissed off Andy hadn’t introduced him to the (at least via Patrick’s description) incredibly amazing guy before. 

Somewhere at the end, they’re talking about video games and how Joe comes over every Saturday night to play with Patrick and how maybe, if Pete would like, he could join them.

“Wait, what?” Pete says, in response to that. Patrick looks a little startled. He goes red.

“I just, I mean, if you’re free.”

“What time?” Pete’s asking before he even thinks if he’s busy. (He’s not.)

“Uh. Joe usually shows up before dinner, so around five maybe?” Patrick asks, he’s looking out from under the brim of a trucker cap with something between excitement and nervousness on his face and Pete doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so cute.

Plans are made. Pete gets Patrick’s address and he doesn’t even have the guy’s phone number. In most circumstances that would lead Pete to believe in the Unseriousness of the “Relationship” developing, but it’s Patrick. And there isn’t even a “Relationship” developing, just a relationship and Pete’s probably okay with that. He wants to be. Patrick is too amazing to lose to something silly like how fucking attractive he is and how hard Pete finds it to keep himself away from really, really beautiful people who shine when they smile and spark deep feelings in his gut, wrench his ribs from his chest to free his heart. 

Pete goes to Andy’s but he makes himself go to his apartment the next morning. It’s cold. Almost cold enough to snow. Something in the air feels solid in his lungs. 

It’s pouring by the time Pete leaves the house again. He goes to Le Petit Chat for his coffee, even though Gerard and Lindsey’s shop is closer. He doesn’t want to see Gerard. He walks the distance quiet, he keeps his face to his shoes, he’s scattering puddles with every step. Jon’s handing him a caffeine-something over the counter when his phone starts yelling about the call he’s receiving. He checks the caller ID on the way out. It’s Her.

He ignores Her call, he’s wracked with guilt and breathing in the solid cold air full of moisture he’s not used to anymore. 

Pete used to gasp and hack in the dry mountain air, too-arid and not-enough-oxygen. Now his body doesn’t feel like it’s known anything else. He’s been born anew to flimsy air and mountain desert. He finds it strangely suiting.

The evergreens stand sentinel on the hills, quiet observers when Pete’s tears overflow down his cheeks and he has to fight to keep himself upright on the way to his apartment. 

The lock catches when his breath does. He feels like he’s being condemned by the forests hiding against the open ribcage of the Rockies. He keeps his drowning eyes fixed on the raindrops in the puddles across the street as he shoves the key in harder, tries to make it work.

Finally, click. 

It’s not home. It’s a place he slept once upon a time, and it feels like such a faraway land that that happened in. Pete’s heart is stuttering in his chest, because he doesn’t believe a thing this place stands for. There’s a thin veneer of dust across everything. It’s pretending to be older than it really is but Pete hasn’t been here in a week at least now. He kicks up dust motes walking into the room, caught in watery light from the single window. His tears catch and clot in the dust. His old aches become new again. 

(He can see Her on the bed if he lets the tears cloud his vision. Smoking a cigarette, post-coital contemplation on Her lips, somewhere behind Her eyes the city of Chicago burns to the ground. The oasis mirage vanishes when he blinks the tears down his cheeks.)

And yet around him, the entire world continues on. A grey sedan slides by under the window, the girl in the passenger seat is painting her toenails on the dashboard. The rain keeps on, ernest. The trees stand still, and everything simply is. It isn’t bad, or good, stable, unstable, or heart rending. 

It goes on. 

Pete cries in his apartment for an hour and a half because he can’t remember why he came in the first place. He cries until he feels like a building burnt from the inside out. Until he feels like he’s spilled every tear inside him and anymore crying will have to be done for him in donation by the rain.

He feels something akin to numbness; something akin to loneliness. He takes a step off the road of consciousness, one degree of separation. He sits still by the window, oblivious to the people below him and acutely aware.

He stands sentinel, evergreen and chained to a place he doesn’t even live in really. A coyote does not an apartment pet make. 

“You’ve lived here an awful long time, Pete, do you think you’re over your wandering days?” is the Voice of Reason, later that evening. Pete ignores the question. She’s become used to him ignoring her.

“I’m not living here.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t feel like I’m alive.”

“Well, you’re not dead,” she points out.

“As good as.”

“Have you made any meaningful relationships since you moved here, Pete?”

“I met An--”

“No,” she interrupts, thinks and rephrases, “Have you made any progress with the girlfriend you maybe had?”

Pete shrugs, he looks at his shoes. His converse have a little hole up the side. He runs the tip of his finger over it, dips it in, pulls at the strings. It’s like deconstructing his heart from the inside out. Or it’s just a fucking shoe.

“I’ve talked to her,” he says.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“No.”

The psychologist leans back. She’s wearing her christmas nails again. This year she’s got little snowmen on them. 

“What does alive mean to you?” she asks, finally, over steepled nails.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know anyone who’s alive? Anything?”

“Andy is alive,” Pete says, noncommittal. This isn’t a conversation he’s ready for. She sees that, at least.

“Do you have feelings for Andy? You talk about him quite a lot.”

“Andy’s straight,” Pete says, voice dull, he already wants to be out of the office. His eyes trace the window sealant for the millionth time. He isn’t avoiding the question. He’s just too tired to care about correcting her.

“That doesn’t change if you have feelings for him or not, does it?”

“Andy’s good people,” Pete says, “Way too good for a trainwreck like me. He doesn’t deserve a coyote on a chain. He deserves a proper bitch.”

“You’re not answering the question, Pete, are you avoiding it?” She asks. He just doesn’t really care to say it flat out. It shouldn’t need to be said. 

“No, I don’t have romantic interest in Andy Hurley,” Pete says, deadpan, his eyes level on her. She jots down a note.

“But you do have feelings for men in general?”

“Uh, no, that’s not exactly how it works?” Pete shrinks into his chair a little, though. Anxiety blossoms somewhere underneath his ribs.

“You’re attracted to men?”

“Depends on the guy,” Pete says with a shrug. She takes down another note. 

“So this ‘girlfriend’, she was actually a he,” she says it as a statement, not a question.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Pete says, trying his best not to scowl. 

“Did your mother expose you to a lot of homosexuality as a child?”

“No,” Pete feels the annoyance-anxiety-contempt for her swelling in his gut.

“How did you learn you were gay then?”

“I’m not,” he says. He brings his knees up. Fuck her chair.

“You just said you’re attracted to men, Pete,” she says it like she’s talking to a kindergartener. 

“That doesn’t make me gay.”

“That’s exactly what makes you gay. Breathing is exactly what makes you alive. Just like taking the pills is exactly what makes you an addict, Pete, you need to stop lying to yourself,” she says, “Stop pretending to be something you’re not.”

He stays quiet. He watches a raccoon overturn a trashcan at the curb below them. He tries to understand what breathing has to do with living. He tries to understand what taking the pills have to do with the addiction when it’s really just to the feelings and the self destruction. He chews his thumbnail, a habit learned from Her. He leaves and lets the puddles soak through the hole in his shoe. 

He leaves with that feeling in the back of his throat. He wants his heart ripped out and thrown in the mud. And if no one’s around to torture the breath from his lips, Pete needs to do it himself. 

First order of business is to start smoking. He’s got half a pack. He burns through it in the hour it takes to walk all the way back instead of taking the bus. He picks up cigarettes from the grocery store and doesn’t stop smoking. The mountains huddle against the sky as the rain starts going to snow, little tiny flurries. 

Pete watches his breath even when he doesn’t have smoke in his lungs. Even watching it, he doesn’t believe in it. It’s like a painting of a unicorn. The most realistic depictions don’t make them real. The most realistic myths are only legends, and Pete won’t be remembered, myth runs in his blood, his story might be told but it’s just a race against time before the last retellings find their way to the bottom half of the hourglass. His immortality is finite. He’ll only live as long as anyone will let him. And no one’s told him he’s allowed to be alive. He tries to convince himself he is anyway.

He’s burning death into his lungs and his mouth tastes like an ashtray by the time he makes it to the record store. (He didn’t realize he’s been walking that direction.) He’s trying to give them a silver smoke lining. He casts a deep shadow on the doorstep. 

He looks in, Lupe’s at the register, doesn’t notice him. He looks back at the garbled sun through marbled clouds, the cold flakes against his cheeks, how he’s freezing, shivering against the wet clothing sticking to him. Going inside would be his salvation.

So he turns, keeps walking. 

It takes another hour before Pete finally shoves into Andy’s dorm, quaking with cold and coughing rattling coughs that shake his insides and make his lungs quiver weak against his ribs.

Andy’s not there, so Pete just collapses on the couch, curls into a ball, lets the cold seep into his bones. He’s not sure if it’s a punishment or a ploy to feel. 

When he falls asleep (he didn’t mean to, it happens strangely serendipitously) he dreams of a woman with an unhinged look in her eyes, like a wild thing left too-long in a cage, he dreams of being sent outside into the Chicago snow and watching house lights slowly blink out while he sat on the doorstep until she let him back inside. He can’t even remember what he was being punished for, just the cold numb which spread through his skin, and then prickly against the spots where his skin goes white and red. 

He dreams about looking for stars, those nights, and finding none in the yellow-glow sky of Chicago. About the feeling of falling apart. About how it didn’t feel like a punishment so much as a way to make his mother happy. How when his fingers started to burn it always felt like a reward. Misery for happiness. Death for life.

He dreams about seven foot blizzards and sloppy hookups. He dreams about buying coke off the dark haired and evil eyed kid who shows up to Bad Poet in echo of buying cigarettes over the walmart counter after work, over and over. He dreams it five times before Andy’s shaking him awake with that look of concern.

“Pete, hey, hey, Pete, are you okay?” 

Waking up feels like a consolation prize to dying. He’s blinking and his head starts hurting the second after he looks up at Andy. 

“I’m happy,” he says to Andy, and he doesn’t know why he says it besides that his mom always told him to fake it til he made it, and Pete is the patron saint of liars and fakes.

“You’re wet,” Andy corrects, pulling on Pete’s shirt, trying to get him to stand up and get off the couch, “And you’re getting the couch wet. How long have you been here?”

“Dunno,” Pete says with a shrug. He gets up out of the wet spot on the couch. It’s dark outside the window, sounds like rain again, somewhere behind the city-lit stormclouds there are indifferent stars. He’s shivering.

“Go take a hot shower, Pete” Andy says, and gives Pete a pointed look which says it isn’t actually a request. So Pete goes. The heat takes near twenty minutes to permeate to bone.  
He dries himself off, goes out for a cigarette, then comes back to straighten his hair. He lugs through life barely clinging to consciousness for the next 27 hours. Then he goes to Patrick’s house.

Patrick’s house. Holy shit.

* * *

* * *

#### i was only born inside my dreams

* * *

* * *

His parents’ house, actually, a lowslung farmhouse on the Manitou side of Colorado Springs, it looks like it’s been slowly sinking into the ground for at least a decade. It’s pastel pink, surrounded by the rusting remnants of a century-old wrought iron fence which looks like it’s been driven into at least once. The shingles are worn. It’d look shabby on any other building. It looks so cozy the second Pete sets foot in front of it he’s checking his baggage at the door. This is a world away from Walmart parking lots. 

Pete feels underdressed as he walks the thirteen steps from the gate to the door. He hesitates in front of the door. (Heavy oak, plain and simple, no peephole, he notes.) He feels like he should have dressed to impress but he’s wearing the same jeans as yesterday and some shirt he found on his floor and he’s not even wearing a belt and he starts to get nervous about what that says about him and he’s almost talked himself into turning around when a car pulls up into the driveway and Patrick half-jumps out of the still moving car. 

“Hey, hey!” he yells over the roof of the off-yellow toyota, “Sorry! We went to get groceries. I don’t have your number so I couldn’t call you.” He’s smiling, like he’s relieved Pete showed up. Something sparks and glows in his chest.

“No problem!” Pete calls back, then, because it’s polite, “Need any help?”

The kindest looking middle aged-to-older woman Pete’s ever seen hoists herself from the passenger seat, and waves at him. 

“Hello! I’m Patricia, the step mother, we’d love some help with the groceries.”

“Don’t make him help!” Patrick looks indignant as two other guys drag themselves up and out of the car, a young guy with a mess of hair rivalling Ray’s, and an older man from the driver’s seat. Hair guy waves as Patricia and Patrick devolve into some sort of argument and Pete sidles over to the popped trunk, weighting his arms down with groceries, and standing back to let someone with a key let them in. Patrick takes a couple bags and leads the way.

Once they’ve dropped those off in the kitchen (Patricia insists that she and David will take care of the rest, now go play your games kids) Patrick bounces on his toes, then disappears toward the stairs just inside the entry, leading Pete and hair dude down to the basement. 

Once they’re down there, Pete’s introduced to Joe, apparently Patrick’s best friend. The fondness in Patrick’s voice for him makes some far corner of Pete’s soul burn with envy. 

They end up just playing Mario Kart for an hour before dinner, and somewhere along the line Pete loses his envy for Joe because to be honest, the guy’s ridiculously awesome and sweet and exactly the kind of person Pete wants to be around right now. Just maybe not quite as much as the literal fucking angel in front of him. (They sit on either side of Patrick, Pete sways into him Accidentally But Not Really when he’s turning. Patrick returns the little ritual. Pete thinks that’s a good sign.)

Joe consecutively wins almost every match, until Patrick finally picks rainbow road and blitzes them both. Pete feels ashamed, but only kind of. They’re all laughing about it like crazy by the end.

They have dinner with Patrick’s stepmother and his father. They chatter about schoolwork and how winter break will shape up and it finally hits Pete that he’s totally crushing on a just-barely-soon-to-be-not-high-school-student. He can’t bring himself to feel bad about it.  
Patrick volunteers to do dishes so Joe and Pete end up playing through Jungle Parkway while Joe keeps up his winning streak. 

“Fuck!” Pete’s swearing heavy about going off the road when Joe pauses the game and turns to him. He looks at Pete, contemplative, for a long, long moment. Pete shifts a little, letting the controller move from one hand to the other slowly, nervously.

“He really likes you.” Joe’s gaze stays straight on Pete. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“Okay,” Pete says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Because he always tells people he’s not going to fuck up. And he always fucks up and he knows his place; its nowhere Patrick should ever roam, but he can’t help himself. Patrick is enchanting. Patrick makes every good dream Pete’s ever had swell against the inside of his ribs over and over. Each heartbeat brings in a new tide to fill his veins.

“Okay,” Joe says, and he unpauses the game. Pete goes straight into the water and howls out another ‘fuck’ while he’s airlifted back to the track. 

“Thanks,” he says, while Joe’s still hooting with laughter and he’s not sure Joe hears him but Joe turns and smiles wide at him and Pete’s pretty sure Joe’s not too worried about Pete messing Patrick up. Maybe he should be, or maybe Pete shouldn’t be. Pete’s not sure.

For some reason, Pete ends up programming Joe’s number into his phone between hoots of laughter and the exchanging of information but he doesn’t manage to get Patrick’s. He leaves in a happy daze, bright and sober, rushing with endorphins. He’s an addict of life and falling in love. Everything is okay until he steps out past the front gate and he’s just looking at the grey street.

The wind picks up, cold against his neck on the way to Andy’s dorm. He catches the bus, hunches somewhere among stony faced travellers of early evening. The interior lights aren’t on, the aging sunset casts long shadows across faces. Everything is cloudy halflight. 

Andy isn’t home. Pete lays down on the couch and crosses his arms over his chest. He listens to the whispers of the few students already sleeping in the building, their dreams grow thickets in his head. He tries to sleep vicariously. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t keep away his own thoughts long. 

Day melts into night sometime around seven PM. Andy doesn’t come home until four or five AM and Pete’s up with his little portable radio spilling fuzzy nineties hits into his tired brain. The ceiling is gray in the halflight. Pete’s eyelashes turn the world into the shadow of a ribcage.

Andy finds him there and shoves him into sitting on the couch. He boots on the tiny TV crammed into the little dorm. Everything goes ghostly blue. 

It’s the exact same color as the watery blue of the bright morning sky when Pete goes out for a cigarette the next morning. Cats and sirens wail to it while the smoke plumes, reaching long fingers upward.

Pete thinks, disconnected, about Her, and about Patrick, about Andy’s sharp, stern way of barking him down. He lets the remaining dreams of the dormitories swirl through his head; comfort, discomfort, fucking, and fear. He drowns himself in everything and lets it sweep through him. He tries to look at Her and Patrick and Andy and Joe like other people do but it’s just too foreign. He can’t imagine anything like being someone else, let alone look at himself like he is.

He feels the singe of the cigarette against his knuckle when it slips back but he can’t find a reason to move it. Growing up makes little pain seem inconsequential. It’s just a sharp pressure. It’s just another thing. 

Somewhere down the street, a dog barks, someone’s lit a wood fire and the smoke isn’t visible but he can smell it, to the north the red rocks of Garden of the Gods stand sentinel on the morning. Students come and go. No one notices him or no one cares. He settles on the front steps of the dorms, leaned flush to the railing, curled in on himself as he lights another cigarette. It’s an hour and a half before Andy comes and finds him, tells him he’s got a surprise for him. 

They don’t take Andy’s car. They walk south, following overgrown trails and backstreets and Pete smokes enough cigarettes for both of them. For once, Andy looks almost as tired as Pete, but he seems okay. He seems happy. 

It isn’t a long walk; just long enough for Pete to worry about feeling a little tired, which doesn’t take much nowadays. 

It’s mostly downhill, which Pete is thankful for because he’s losing his legs by the end and Andy’s trying not to frown at him, Pete’s not sure if it’s concern or annoyance at this point. He wonders when Andy will start hating him. He’s a trainwreck. It’s hard not to hate the carnage. He hates himself, it only makes sense that eventually everyone else will too.

Pete’s scowling by the time they stop in front of Amanda’s Fonda and he’s sunk his fingers so deep into his hoodie pockets he’s getting lint stuck in his nails. His head’s in the stormclouds and it looks like it’s going to snow. Somewhere against Pike’s Peak a lightning bolt touches down. The thunder comes rumbling through seconds later.

Andy looks pointedly at Pete, nonverbal cue to say ‘go in’. Pete can’t find any emotion behind Andy’s eyes. A quiet guard dog considering the coyote in his yard with a measured indifference. 

Pete's sneakers scuff the sidewalk and he feels a little sick but he pulls the big red door open. He can't stop thinking about how he's just bad news and he wants to know why Andy's taking him to brunch. Maybe he's going to tell him he doesn't want Pete sleeping on his couch anymore.

Maybe this is the end of the only stable thing Pete's ever had here. He realizes somewhere in a vague, distant way the amount of reliance he has on Andy. He wishes he was more self sufficient. He wishes he wasn't a trainwreck.

The hostess at the podium takes the stage, she's got blonde hair tucked perfectly into place. She's got her makeup done perfect. Her winged eyeliner is even on both sides. Her nails are painted sky blue. She's a perfect actress, purring a 'How many?' as soon as she sets perfect blue eyes on the two of them. 

He remembers vaguely when She tried to pull off looks like that; before the dark rings of eyeliner and the heavy form fitting hoodies, before She darkened Her eyes and Her clothes. He likes to think She's a little more real than that.

(Pete also likes to think there's good in the world; that's easier to believe and he hasn’t seen a lot of good.)

"Two," Pete says, leaning an arm on the structure in front of her, pinning the menus down. He's smirking his coyote smirk. He's putting brightness behind his eyes where there isn't any. Fake it til you make it. Her perfectly rehearsed smile is starting to slip into something more vulnerable when Andy cuts her off as her mouth is opening, two perfect pink lips sticked and glossed parting just so. Pete can almost imagine her gripping the sheets.

"Actually, we've already got a party waiting for us," Andy says, and the moment is broken. The magic vanishes. Pete looks at him, curious, tries to keep his face bright.

(He flashes forward to the night, he can imagine the hostess playing pretend and sleeping in his dusty bed and vanishing with the dawn, leaving a number Pete won't even bother to program into his phone. He can imagine her the next night, home alone, crying herself out of her makeup, thinking about all the guys she's given numbers to, and all the calls she never got. It's a never-ending game.)

"Oh, the big table in the second room, go right ahead, they've just ordered drinks," the hostess says and her charisma flickers off. It's all a game that they were playing and Pete folded too fast for her interest to stay. No nights will ever happen between them. They'll share nothing. Probably for the best. Pete’s alright in bed but he’s better with a pen and his nights have been given to poetry recently. 

Andy leads the way into the next room, where Gabe is sprawled in the corner of a square boothed in corner of a much longer table extending past the booth. He has an elbow up on the back, a foot up on the bench. He’s got a black eye and a smirk on his face and some part of Pete feels a little more than relieved to see him. William is tucked under his right arm, he looks half asleep, wearing a knit sweater and pajama bottoms. Travie sits across from them, eyes on his blackberry though he looks up and grins at Pete. 

“Hey man, was wondering when you guys would show up,” he says, and then Lupe’s standing behind Pete and he nearly jumps out of his skin when Lupe greets them and slides into the booth on the other side of Will. Pete scoots much less gracefully into the space next to Gabe and Gabe squeezes his shoulder. 

“Hey,” Gabe says, close to his ear, and part of Pete relaxes. 

“Hey,” he says back, he tries not to lean into Gabe’s hand. Thunder rattles the roof, outside the window, sleet starts coming down in freezing sheets. It looks unpleasant. 

Pete looks up and Andy’s sitting between Lupe and Travie, and they’re all talking hip hop and Pete wonders if this is a bad thing or why they’re all together or what this is. Gabe must understand the look of confusion and concern. 

"Wentz, are you okay?” he asks, his eyebrows coming up and knitting into his forehead. Will watches Pete with lidded eyes. Pete wonders if Will is ever jealous of the way he knows Gabe. Pete’s not jealous of Will. He knows that.

“I’m okay,” Pete says. He’s not sure if it’s a lie. 

“It’s just brunch. Why are you so nervous?” 

“I don’t know, sorry. I just don’t know what I’m doing here?” 

Andy smiles at him from across the table.

“We’re doing brunch on the weekends now, when we can. We thought it would be nice for everyone to see each other at a reasonable hour,” he contributes. The smile seems genuine but it almost doesn’t touch his eyes. Pete wonders if Andy’s okay if this isn’t about him. 

“Eleven in the morning isn’t a reasonable time,” Will contributes, settling his cheek on Gabe’s shoulder. Gabe’s hand finds his hair, stroking absently. They both look almost as exhausted as Pete feels. Gabe smells like cigarettes and spilt beer. They’ve probably been up most of the night.

“For normal people it is, some of us gotta get to work,” Lupe says, chuckling, and he and Travie delve back into talk about verse and rhyme. 

The hostess, the perfect suicide blonde in winged eyeliner, brings a pitcher of mimosas and IDs them all, Pete’s kind of glad he brought his ID, when all’s said and done because a drink kind of sounds amazing. 

“You look tired,” Gabe’s saying in his ear, then, and for some reason Lupe is switching into the seat next to Pete.

“He always looks tired, pretty sure the bags are permanent,” Lupe says while he pours himself a mimosa and raises his eyebrows, smiles.

“I’m always tired,” Pete says, he shrugs softly, smiles a little fake smile at them. Neither of them buy it, it’s plain on their faces. Gabe knows him and Lupe’s smart. 

“You should try to sleep when you get home, man. I’ve got some green on me if you need it,” Gabe says, quiet. 

“Okay, Yeah. That’d be nice.” Pete’s smile’s a little more genuine.

“Let’s find a spot to smoke up after lunch,” Gabe says and Will’s opening his mouth to correct him to ‘brunch’ but Pete’s eyes are catching on the angel in the doorway, Joe just behind him. Patrick looks fresher than any of them, bundled up in a flannel hoodie and a blue scarf which looks hand-knit. 

Patrick catches sight of him at the same time, and the look of slight perplexion which he always seems to wear when he’s not sure why he’s doing something evaporates into this smile that makes Pete’s world go bright and fuzzy. The gray leaves the edges of his vision.

“Hey,” he says, as Patrick sits down on the other side of Lupe, and Lupe says it at the same time and they’re all laughing while Joe slings his messenger bag down. 

“I’m not sticking around, I just wanted a ride out here,” Joe explains and Pete has to force his eyes from Patrick to pay attention to him because the flush on Patrick’s cheeks from the cold and the way his hair clings wet to his face under his hat is kind of the most attractive thing Pete’s ever seen. 

“You should stay,” Pete says, and he means it, something he realizes as he says it because he keeps forgetting how much he likes Joe’s company. He keeps forgetting how much he loves all of the people around him. The soft curve at Patrick’s lip when he smiles at Pete’s interest in having Joe around makes him remember.

“I have detention,” Joe says, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. It’s messy with sleet. 

“Ooooh, bad boy. What’d you do?” Gabe chimes in with a chuckle. 

“Did you run in the halls?” Pete smirks, leaning into Gabe with solidarity and kinship.

“Don’t gang up on him. He didn’t do anything bad,” Patrick frowns a fake frown that comes off as half-pout and Pete can’t help but lean toward Lupe then because Patrick’s on his other side. Lupe takes the hint and takes that as his cue to stand up and awkwardly work his way around Patrick. Patrick happily fills his warm seat, shaking out his jacket and putting it over his lap. 

“I actually didn’t do anything bad. This detention is bullshit. Who the fuck even gives weekend detention?” Joe’s frowning, shaking his head and digging around in his bag. 

Patrick laughs this tiny laugh and immediately looks sorry for laughing at Joe’s misery. 

“Apparently, Ms Jameson does. Good luck, Joe.” 

“No, but seriously, what’d you do?” Gabe asks, looking a little more interested than he maybe should. 

“He said ‘that’s what she said’ one too many times, I guess,” Patrick answers for him while Joe huffs in disapproval. 

“Seriously? Damn teachers are crazy. You’ll like college better,” Gabe contributes. 

Joe leaves by the time they’re ordering, and Pete’s whispering in Patrick’s ear that he’ll get him brunch, even though he’s pretty sure they’re not at that stage yet, he’s feeling reckless all of a sudden, like there’s a hole where the anxiety was. He needs to fill it with the best and worst decisions of his life or he’s not really living. He needs to throw caution to the wind and Patrick opens his mouth to argue but Pete reaches out, slides a hand over his mouth. 

“Nope,” he whispers, “It’s gonna happen. Now order.”

Their waiter, different from the suicide blonde, a lanky guy who introduces himself as Alex and who has a strong accent that sounds european to Pete but he’s not good at accents and he doesn’t want to ask, turns to Patrick and Patrick orders and then it’s Pete’s turn. (He gets something small, inconsequential, he’ll push it around his plate while he watches his friends eat and try to work up his morning appetite but he won’t eat most of it, he’ll be too busy watching Patrick smile and chat with Lupe and Travie about tracks and different programs and which ones bounce quickest, which ones have the least unnatural sounds, which ones don’t clip obnoxiously.)  
Pete can’t tell why he was worried because by the end, Patrick’s surreptitiously swiped a mimosa and is leaning into him and Pete has a bit of caked eyeliner stuck in his eyelash making a little blot in his vision which is somehow comforting for whatever tired reasoning his brain has. 

Gabe slides the bill out of Will’s hands when he picks it up and sets the cash for them both in the fold (no one bats an eyelash; it’s couple behavior, it’s expected of them), passing right, to Andy, who shoots Pete a look that says ‘you want me to get this?’ and Pete shakes his head in a miniscule motion, everyone settles and when Lupe passes the bill to Patrick, Pete slips it out of his hands and slides three bills into the fold, setting it in the center of the table. When he looks up, everyone’s eyes are on him and Patrick.   
Everything freezes. (Pete’s phone buzzes in his pocket in the silence.)

Patrick’s face goes red and Pete can’t tell if his has gotten hot or if it’s been that way. He takes his best nonchalant sip of his drink, crosses his ankle over his knee and leans almost imperceptibly into Patrick.

“So it’s a thing?” Will says, he’s blinking at Patrick like he’s only just realized he’s there.

“No,” Pete and Patrick say it together, and almost synchronized their knees fall against one another under the table. Their hands stay squarely on the wood, visibly far enough apart to mean nothing. Lupe eyes them longer, and Andy has his eyes levelly on Pete, but everyone else melds back into conversation after they dismiss it and the moment is over.

Pete will be anxious about this later, but there’s not time as they’re stepping out under the awning and Will is lighting a virginia slim, long and pale and thin like him, and Gabe’s stretching the arm not around his waist. 

“We should find a place,” he says, at the same time Patrick opens his mouth to say,

“Pete, Andy, do you need a ride back to the dorms?”

Pete looks between Gabe and Patrick, instantly torn.

He knows the weed will win out. Mind alteration, self destruction, it always does. He can’t help it. It’s in Pete’s nature to choose chemical interaction over love. He’s just the same as any other man. He doesn’t want to pretend to be someone he’s not. 

“Patrick, do you smoke?” he asks, flicking his gaze to Gabe, a look that tells him he wants nothing more than for Patrick to come with them. Gabe grins, because that’s his cue. 

“If not, man, you totally should,” Gabe says with a wink. Patrick looks a little startled. 

“Cigarettes make me sneeze,” he says, and Pete kind of just wants to hug him. 

“No, no chico, weed, macoña. The green stuff,” Gabe says and he smiles the smirk that Pete’s pretty sure he taught him, and Pete winces a little at the look of slight anxiety that touches Patrick’s face, but he seems to deliberate a long moment. 

“No,” he says, finally, “but I’m not one to turn down a new experience. And Pete’s going to jump out of his skin if I say no anyway.”  
Pete goes bright red but he grins and flops an arm around Patrick’s shoulders, tries to make sure no one notices how bad his cheeks have flushed.

“Helllll yes,” Gabe hums, then turns to Andy, “Hurley, you in?” 

“Gotta study,” Andy says, shaking his head, “I’ll see you at the dorm, Pete, have fun.” He turns with that and somewhere looking for a spot they lose Travie and Lupe, too and it’s just the four of them sidling alongside downtown down backstreets and front alleys. Pete feels on top of the world every time Patrick sways Accidentally On Purpose into his shoulder, and the kid’s smiling and he doesn’t know what to do with himself but he keeps an arm around Patrick’s shoulders as long as he can. 

His veins are full of the stuff coating sparklers and he’s just been lit. He’s a firework. He wonders when he’ll explode. He wonders if he’ll burn down the city with him or just burn a hole in the flimsy film of the dream. This has to be a dream. He hasn’t felt this good since he was last with Patrick. He hasn’t felt this good in a while, even before that.   
Gabe and Will are hooting with laughter but Patrick’s quiet next to him, when Pete stops thinking, and Pete grins at him, trying to cover any thought he had in his head because Patrick is looking at him like he’s a science project. Like he needs to be observed. Pete would resent that in anyone else.

It doesn’t ruin the moment, though. And then Gabe grabs his arm and he grabs out for Patrick so he doesn’t fall and they all go tumbling into a sleety slushy puddle. Will looks down at them from atop his spindly body, trying not to laugh and failing miserably. His laugh is light and Pete can’t help but laugh, too, as he picks himself up from the mouth of the alley and offers Patrick a hand, pulling him up and letting Gabe look around, confused and still a second behind the realization of exactly why he’s now sitting an inch deep in freezing slush.

“You okay? Sorry,” Pete says, still laughing between words, he brushes Patrick off while Patrick pulls his hat down further. His cheeks are blooming red and his lips are fitting into that perfect amused smile, and out of nowhere he shoves his shoulder into Pete’s chest, and Pete topples right back into the puddle, knocking Gabe back down with him from his mid-getting up. 

Will’s shoes get wet but he’s too busy laughing his ass off at all of them to care and Patrick’s laughing, too, and Pete can’t help it but join in as Gabe helps him up. And then they’re both standing in a puddle laughing with the two people not standing in a puddle and the sleet is slowing down and the sun is peeking through the clouds and Gabe is sliding an arm around Will’s waist, pulling him close to kiss him heavy and Pete’s eyes meet Patrick’s.

Time slows again, because they’re both looking at each other with relaxing smiles and wide pupils and they’re both holding themselves back because they’re adults, they can take this slow.

They find a spot not far from Amanda’s Fonda, and the sleet starts letting off to a gentle drizzle. The ripples left in slushy puddles look like miniature tides, and they’re ducking under the awning of a closed tattoo parlor while Gabe packs a glass piece in the shape of a coiled snake. Patrick leans into Pete’s side and he can feel the freezing water seeped into his clothes against his ribs and for a moment, his mind blanks. He can think of and feel nothing but Patrick beside him and his heart beating in his chest. Way too-fast.

His eyes absently scan the tattoo parlor’s hours. He forces himself not to look at Patrick, whose eyes are steadily on his face. A lighter clicks, and the smell of pot slowly curls itself into Pete’s nose. He relaxes while Patrick’s shoulder beside him stiffens just a tiny bit.

“You don’t have to smoke with us, you know,” Pete’s saying without even realizing it when Gabe passes the bowl to him. He’s looking at Patrick with concerned eyes and quiet interest. He’s trying to convey honesty but he doesn’t know how. Patrick’s lip twists down a little, uncertain. He wavers while Pete lights the bowl, takes a long hit and then holds it still in his hands. The glass feels more solid, more heavy than it is. Like the only fixed point in the universe. It’s cold. Pete’s hands cup it tight while he waits for Patrick to decide.

Then Patrick’s reaching out for the bowl and the tension drains into the slush in the gutters and the bowl is whirligiging and Gabe’s leaning in to shotgun Will a hit between drags on his Slim and Patrick’s giggling this perfect pristine giggle like ancient crystals brimming at his throat. 

And then Pete’s leaning in, kissing Patrick’s jaw and the other three are freezing but Pete doesn’t care. He can blame it on being high. He can take chances. He can take the world in his palm and swallow it like ativan. It’s all at his fingertips, it’s all behind his ribs and he’s spilling over from the lips and Patrick’s turning so they’re pressed together and somewhere, distantly, Pete registers that Gabe is hooting and Will his hushing him. It’s all background in the rain to the warm glow against his chest and face.

It’s all background to falling in love.

When Pete finally checks his text messages back at the dorm, the late afternoon sun is spilling in through the window and pooling in the darkest corners. He feels on cloud nine. 

She’s texted. Her words are short, he gives Her poetry no more than a glance. Some part of him is over Her. Some part of him never will be. And that’s okay. Her words are some closure, or he manufactures them to mean some. 

_Pete. I’m sorry I lied about being pregnant. I miss you. I need you. I believe in you. I’m drunk. Come pick me up. Come fuck me. Come over._

He doesn’t ever text her back. He doesn’t need her to write poetry anymore. He doesn’t need her to puncture his lungs just to bleed his heart through. He doesn’t have to rip himself in two for Her half-hearted words. That was side 1; he’s ready for his b-side story. He’s ready for his b-side self. His heart’s pumping out singles every beat and they’re all full of words which sound better on an angel’s breath than the moans of a Girl Who Puts Coyotes On Chains.

Pete stops capitalizing her pronouns in his head.

Pete lets go.

The winter of 2007 is mild. The snow comes light and stays soft. The cough doesn’t return. The evergreen trees keep some hope of spring at the back of Pete’s mind. He spends his time on Andy’s couch in watery winter sun, or at the record store, he spends his night in a corporate unchanging wasteland on 8th, filling his head with words that spill over his head.

He’s a mental patient in his own head, scrawling across the walls until it’s illegible. He comes back to the dorms and writes for hours. He starts going to his apartment again when Patrick shows interest in spending time there. The cupboards slowly fill with food, not just boxed shit, stuff that needs skillets and saucepans, stuff that he and Patrick puzzle through.

They don’t kiss again for a long time. They’re adults. They can take this slow. They’ve got the whole world and the whole road ahead of them. 

Sometime mid-January Pete starts forgetting to fake smile. He stops faking it because he’s made it.

The chain around his neck breaks in February, when he’s laying on the same old couch in the triple dorm that belongs to Andy, Joe, and Patrick now. Serendipity fills his lungs. His head is in Patrick’s lap and Patrick’s fingers are in his hair. 

Patrick turns eighteen in April (the same month Pete’s spoken to by a publishing group when they have a scout at Bad Poet, informally offered a little deal in slam poetry and published poems), and Pete still has problems believing he’s so young. Somehow, he can’t shake the feeling that Patrick’s eyes have seen the pyramids rise and saw Rome burn. Patrick is eighteen going on extinct, a living study in ancient anthropology. 

Pete feels immortal. They have ichor in their veins. They’re watching stars fall from the mountainside, they’re watching spindly trees stand sentinel clinging to the red rocks of Garden of the Gods, they’re alive. He forgets to pretend to be anyone but himself. Everyone knows him for him and that’s enough.   
Pete stops going to his psychologist in May. He stops talking about his mother. He lets the legend die. He lets go of the noose around his neck and stops tracing the scars on his wrists with his fingers. He does less cocaine. He stops popping pills.

Pete’s sitting at a diner on the corner with his knee falling into Patrick’s and he’s talking about Mario Kart and how good Joe is at it and it hits him. Change came cloaked in a disguise of time and he didn’t realize it. He looks back three years. He looks back and realizes he didn’t come to Colorado to fix himself but he did. He came to find the end of the world and he found the end of the life he’d been half-living. He ran until he couldn’t run and he’s not scared anymore.

He’s a coyote chasing the sunrise now, not a fenced-off sunset. And he’s not chasing it alone. Pete smiles a coyote grin out the window, he slips his fingers into Patrick’s on top of the table. Neither Andy nor Joe bat an eyelash. The vignette spins madly on and the lyrics don’t end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I've been in Colorado Springs since October 22nd doing field research and hanging out with my boyfriend. If you have any questions or just want to comment, please don't hesitate to do so! Sorry for the short author's note.
> 
> The last bit of this, and concurrent installments to this series will be my NaNoWriMo push for this month, so expect a steady-ish stream of content. The next thing I'll be getting done is Gerard's oneshot, then I'll be moving on to some more random installments before we get to the real meaty main plot of this series. 
> 
> If anyone's on tumblr, I've made a post promoting Any Failing Empire, with a cover, on my blog (notfiguringmyselfout) and would love if you reblogged it, of course no pressure though. Have a great day.   
> ~Reggie


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